[feanaro]

> literally stealing the ad revenue.

Are you sure you want to say it's literally stealing the ad revenue? I would imagine literally stealing the ad revenue would require robbing the bank or safe where the ad revenue money is stored.

[ldarby]

Yes. You have reduced the amount of cash they have and increased the amount you have by the same amount. If that's not stealing I don't know what is.

Trying to say that's not stealing is like trying to say "Someone hacked into to my bank account and "obtained" my money" is not stealing either just because there was no physical cash involved.

[feanaro]

How does it increase the amount of cash I have? I watch the video, without ads, and I have exactly the same amount of cash as before.

It also does not decrease the amount of cash owned by the content owner or hosting company (apart from hosting costs, but that's the nature of the internet and they are willfully participating in it). The only cost involved is opportunity cost.

[ldarby]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881914

[feanaro]

Yes, you are indeed talking about the opportunity cost. Re-uploading the video as your own (with or without ads) would indeed constitute copyright infringement, but without it, it is not.

[ldarby]

I'm not sure this fits the definition of opportunity cost either? I understand why you think it does (because it was money not gained that could have been) but the content producer doesn't have multiple options to choose from here. They expect to have X dollars in their account, instead they have X-Y dollars and there's Y dollars in thief's account, because of the actions of the thief, not because of any decision they made.

[feanaro]

The crux is in the expectation: they expect that they will make X in a given day, but an expectation is not a guarantee or a right. They also could have made X in a given day, but sometimes that just doesn't happen due to various factors.

I'm not sure to whom you are referring when you say "thief", but I was under the impression that we were talking about a person watching, but not re-uploading, a Youtube video without viewing ads. This person does not have Y dollars in his account as a result of copyright infringement since they simply watched the video and did not put it up for further distribution.

[sudosysgen]

How does watching an ad decrease the amount of money I have?

[ldarby]

> How does watching an ad decrease the amount of money I have?

There are at least 5 parties here:

    · Content producer (spending time and effort making original content that people watch)
    · Platform
    · Advertiser
    · Content consumers
    · Thief

In your comment you're Content producer. The advertiser pays the platform who pays the content producer, and the amount they get is based on the number of views (there are other factors, but I think views is the main one). Let's say they're getting X views per day. Then the theif takes the content and uploads it to their own account with ads enabled, and gets Y views per day, and gets paid for that. No one is going to watch the content on the producer's channel a 2nd time just to make up their view stats, so now the producer is only getting X-Y views per day and hence is paid less.

This is the reason Youtube's Content-ID exists.

[sudosysgen]

The illegal act here would be re-uploading the video. I'm asking how downloading the video by itself increases the amount of money I have.

[ldarby]

It doesn't, and I never said it does. You asked for an explanation of how ad revenue theft happens, and I gave that.